In Tewksbury, England, May 24th, 1819, was born a little boy who was
destined to become one of the leading manufacturers of the nineteenth
century. At fourteen he came to America with his father, who died three
days after their arrival here. A poor, homeless orphan, in a strange
land--ah! it takes courage to rise from such a beginning. There is
little 'luck' in the life of such boys who become wealthy. The poet
says:
"The fading flowers of pleasures
Spring spontaneous from the soil,
But the real harvest's treasure
Yields alone to patient toil."
Whether these lines ever caught the eye of Henry Disston or no, we are
not able to say; certain it is, however, that he concurred in that
belief, for so hard did he work, and so closely did he study the
business, that he was made foreman when he was but eighteen.
When his seven long years of apprenticeship was up he arranged with his
employer to take his wages in tools. With scarcely any money, he wheeled
a barrow load of coal to his cellar where he began to make saws. Saws of
American manufacture, were at that time held in poor esteem, and he had
a great public prejudice to overcome. But Henry Disston determined to
show people that he could compete with foreign goods, and to do this he
sometimes sold goods at an advance of only one per cent. He moved to a
small room twenty feet square, at the corner of Front and Laurel
streets; this was in 1846. In 1849 he was burned out, and before he
rebuilt he obtained control of additional land adjoining that which he
had occupied, and here built a new factory. Now he began to reap the
reward of his early toil and study. He was enterprising, like all
successful men, and his inventive genius soon enabled him to get up new
designs for teeth to do different kinds of work. He never allowed a poor
tool, or an imperfect one, to be shipped from his factory. Consequently
a market once gained was easily kept. His enterprise induced him to add
a file works to his already large business; in fact, the Keystone Saw
Works made a splendid exhibit at the Centennial, showing all kinds of
tools made from steel. His works cover hundreds of acres of land, and
employ over fifteen hundred hands, while the business extends all over
the world.
In March, 1878, this great manufacturer died in Philadelphia. He was a
very common man--great wealth did not spoil him, and he could perform
with his own hands any part of the work in his immense establishment.
This ability to work thorough mastery of the business, which had taken
years of patient thought to develop, brought about his splendid success.